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Question about seguyrias notation
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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 RE: Question about seguyrias notation (in reply to turnermoran)
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Good readers understand that phrasing needs to be conveyed by the meter and beaming of subdivisions. IN this sense siguiriyas does not have the same symmetry as buleria guajira etc and should not really be notated the same way. THe simple phrase that any drummer probably understands is 7/8 (beamed as 1,2,12,1,2,3) for the Bb harmony and phrase, coupled or always alteternated with a 5/8 bar (beamed as 1,2,3,1,2) which is the A chord or remate phrase.
Even it is obvious to me having hung with drummers that showed me various odd meter concepts, this method I have never seen adapted to siguiriyas by people transcribing.
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Oct. 9 2012 15:27:18
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turnermoran
Posts: 391
Joined: Feb. 6 2010
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RE: Question about seguyrias notation (in reply to turnermoran)
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thanks to all for your input. Looks like no one managed to answer my question, but I realized I just needed to watch the video and compare to the notation to answer my own question. Duh. (funny how having a toddler means that that simple task may take days to make happen).
Anyway, the Encuentro notation is not what I guessed. It's actually as follows:
starts with a measure of 3/4, where beat 1 is the end of the compás. (or a rest if you are beginning the compás)
Beat 2 & 3 of that measure are the duple meter beats. (One-and-Two-and)
Then the measure of 6/8 is the triple meter part of the compás (Three-and-a-Four-and-a)
And then it goes back to 3/4 where the first beat, as previously mentioned, is the last beat of the compás (Five-and).
No doubt, an awkward way to notate. Too bad the alternating measures of 7/8 and 5/8 haven't caught on, as per Ricardo's suggestion. While some may take issue that it doesn't capture the compás perfectly, at least it conveys the complexity of the compás, but also keeps the "beat" (the 8th note) constant, and the compás would start on beat 1, which is where "notation" and "musical phrasing" must intersect for there to be any logic in the system.
That's part of what makes the 3/4 - 6/8 thing confusing; no where do they indicate that "eighth note equals eighth note", and if the goal is to take a style of music that doesn't conform well to the written paper and notate it, there is no point to breaking the fundamental goal of notation by starting a phrase in the middle of measure.
For those who don't read music, they don't need the paper. And for those who do, they will be misguided.
total fail
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Date Oct. 9 2012 18:44:55
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Question about seguyrias notation (in reply to turnermoran)
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Well, not to go against the master plotters, but I always think notating siguiriyas is a funny idea. I think standard tab works best, and then listen to the way the compas works if you can get tab of a known track.
In that video at the end Moraito comes to the same conclusion. He shrugs his shoulders and says play the compas with your heart. Siguiriyas has elastic compas when playing for a singer and more strict when for a dancer. The idea that you would actually copy meticulously a siguiriyas is foreign idea to me completely. It seems like it is so nuanced in how you articulate the details in time that it would be impossible to write it down.
I read music, but if I were to write down siguiryas or at least make sketch of one, I would use tabulature and write the 12 beat structure over the tab with the '8' being the first beat. I think it's too complicated to bother to write it in notation because you want to take a siguiriyas off the page as soon as possible and start to play with it an make it your own. Ideally you would learn a siguiriyas by rote for another guitarist or by listening to Melchor or some other player like that.
I think a lot of people just have too much pride to "give in" to the obvious way of notating it with 8-, 10-, 12-, 123, 456-7 simplicity. And sure, when you play for a dance class or a dancer they will count as a five beat thingy because that is what dancers do and how they are taught, but that does not mean it makes the most sense to notate that way for guitar. And if a guitar teacher counts siguriyas as a five beat thingy, you can learn it that way too, but still notate it with simple tab.
I doubt Melchor de Marchena, one of the greatest siguiyeros bothered to write down one scrap. \
Clarity really just depends on how you primarily understand it, what is clear for one person looks like cloudy water to another.
...
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Oct. 9 2012 19:38:17
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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RE: Question about seguyrias notation (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
....In that video at the end Moraito comes to the same conclusion. He shrugs his shoulders and says play the compas with your heart. Siguiriyas has elastic compas when playing for a singer and more strict when for a dancer...... It seems like it is so nuanced in how you articulate the details in time that it would be impossible to write it down.
.... I think it's too complicated to bother to write it in notation because you want to take a siguiriyas off the page as soon as possible and start to play with it an make it your own. Ideally you would learn a siguiriyas by rote for another guitarist or by listening to Melchor or some other player like that.
I think a lot of people just have too much pride to "give in" to the obvious way of notating it with 8-, 10-, 12-, 123, 456-7 simplicity. And sure, when you play for a dance class or a dancer they will count as a five beat thingy because that is what dancers do and how they are taught, but that does not mean it makes the most sense to notate that way for guitar. And if a guitar teacher counts siguriyas as a five beat thingy, you can learn it that way too, but still notate it with simple tab.
I doubt Melchor de Marchena, one of the greatest siguiyeros bothered to write down one scrap. \
Clarity really just depends on how you primarily understand it, what is clear for one person looks like cloudy water to another.
...
Over a 60 year period of studying, playing, arranging, composing and annotating numerous kinds of music my father developed a highly sophisticated way of dealing with structure, rhythm, context and interpretation. He devoted 20 years of his live studying/teaching the art of flamenco guitar on a full time base (basically 24/7) and invested thousands and thousands of ours in analyzing/annotating every aspect of the art of flamenco guitar in the smallest details imaginable. His handwritten flamenco scores are the very best in existence but available for flamenco students of Rotterdam University of Music only (and even they don't have unrestricted access). No printed/published music known to me (flamenco, classical or otherwise) are a match to the handwritten scores he produced over the years His more than 1000 pages of flamenco music (covering over 20 styles) show you the exact notes, rhythm, left /right hand fingering and (way better than others) the musical/technical context of every single note in relation to the compas and the other notes played.
"Siguiriyas has elastic compas when playing for a singer and more strict when for a dancer...... It seems like it is so nuanced in how you articulate the details in time that it would be impossible to write it down".
I guess the only restrictions my father have are the rhythmic restrictions of written music in general which affect all music from rock to Bach. But within those restrictions he adapted a highly sophisticated way of dealing with structure, rhythm, context and interpretation. Notes/rhythms that are part of the main layer(s) are annotated as usual and notes/rhythms that can be considered as secondary layers are annotated in smaller notes/rhythmic interludes (just like using (...) in written words). As a result all the events are annotated and enjoyed in the same order and with the same level of importance as intended by the artist and in that sense his scores does indeed honer the original idea in every detail.
As far as the "elastic compas" is concerned, that's precisely what it is ELASTIC.....but like a real elastic everything still has an underlaying (un-stretched) base that can be annotated as usual. It's up to the artist if he wants to speed up/slow down and to witch extent. Moraito himself happens to be a very emotional player and most of his seguiriyas falsetas suffer a high dose of unexpected (almost volcanic) speed eruptions. It is nice that he "fallows his heart" but like you stated, what is clear to one person looks like cloudy water to another and although i'm a very experienced player/listener i find it impossible to interpreted his extreme speed eruptions at first ear. It's like he is starting a nice and clear line andsuddenlygets(over)motionalandspeedsuplikehell. Obviously when i re-listen it i can deduct "and suddenly gets (over)emotional and speeds up like hell", which also would be the line annotated by my father (spoken text is also notated in spanish and not in the artists dialect or (sometimes unintended) personal habits).
As far as seguiriyas is concerned my father insisted on using the 5 beat system since this is the pulse felt by (most) professional singers, dancers and guitar player. As a result the main pulse is very clear and you never have to doubt the position of any given note to the main pulse. But like i said, his handwritten music can be enjoyed on many levels and as soon as a lot of notes are played he also shows/clusters the inner beats, creating an artificial 12-beat system inside the 5-beat system (combining the visual clearness of the main pulse with the possibility to zoom in in details).
for instance with rasgueados on beat 3 and 4 (aka 12-5) in a llamada
3....(and)....(the)...../4....(and)...(the)..../5....(and)...
12../1........./2........./3...../4......../5......./6
*....****....****..../* *...****...****./*.............(5-beat system showing inner beats)
*.../****.../****.../* *../****../****...*.............(standard 12-beat bulerias notation)
This clearly shows the advantage of using a 5 beat system (adapting inner beasts when necessary) in comparison to a standard 12 beat notation..... both show the same clusters of notes but the 5 beat system shows you the main pulse as well.
And as far as "i think it's to complicated to bother to write it in notation because you want to take a seguiriyas off the page as soon as possible and start to play it and make it your own" is concerned.....
If a highly trained expert like my father bothers to inventory/select the very best material available, spends years to check/annotate the exact notes, the exact fingering, the exact rhythm, the interpretation and the underlaying structures (all based on a lifetime of experience being amongst top level players) that does not only offer you the notes but also that lifetime of experience (lifetimes in fact since 2 simple pages of music explaining Paco Peñas basic set up of fandangos took my father a couple of hours but it took Paco years to acquire that knowledge....all it took me was the costs of the copying machine).
I once had to learn Paco Peñas Solea por Bulerias. Having it on paper it took me only 3 hours to memorize the notes, the rhythm and the fingering.... i tip my hat if you can memorize that piece in a week using ear play only! His Peteneras took me 3 hours as well.... Funny enough the only piece that gave me "a hard time" was Serranas (basically a seguiriyas in e). The 5 beat system (covering beats of various length and seemingly endless waves of notes) indeed seemed "to much to handle" at first and after 3 hours of struggling i only managed to memorize 1 out of 14 pages of music.....but once i got the drift of it i memorized the other 13 pages in 2 hours..... i'm pretty sure i couldn't have ear played that piece in 5 hours, let along understand it!
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Date Oct. 10 2012 18:09:02
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Question about seguyrias notation (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Simply put, Erik is very methodical as it's in his blood. Being of similar stock myself i appreciate his thoughts on this and agree with him whole heartedly. I always was aware that though complex, the music notation system out to be able to catch EVERY detail of both cante and guitar and even baile if you wanted. Its mathematical certainty.
Oh I get it, I'm part Northern European methodical wonk myself. And I know that mathmatically music can be fully notated, but we have not yet come up with an equation for feelings.
I am not saying notation is bad of that Erik's work is not valuable, because it is. I think I am getting at different ways to preserve or access music like siguiriyas. When it comes to Jerez siguyriyas I would think that some of it is out of compas, but I would not consider that an issue or a mistake. It simply is part of how that music works. Flamenco is not perfect or neat in every way.
Erik was mentioning that he can't get/hear a falseta on first listening but that it takes two times. Well for me it takes about two dozen times or more. I would not be able to learn a complex flamenco falseta from detailed notation alone. It would hinder how I get at it. The detail would clog up a fluent passing though the music. I have to hear it in my head for beginning to end and the fastest way is to listen to recordings. So I listen to a piece over several days if not months to internalize it, then try to work it out.
But to be fair, yes if I had to know certain details about fingering or fast notes I can't get I would refer to a notated sheet. But for me and this may be different for others, I could not learn how to play it in time from the sheet, I would refer back to how I internalize it an use that internal what ever it is to order the speed, feeling and note duration.
I guess we all go about it different ways. So I don't want anyone to think I don't value the preservation in written form of Moraito's music, because I do, I just have a different way of catching on to it.
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Date Oct. 11 2012 19:18:34
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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RE: Question about seguyrias notation (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
I always was aware that though complex, the music notation system out to be able to catch EVERY detail of both cante and guitar and even baile if you wanted.
Ricardo
I don't see a problem in annotating dance, cante however is a totally different matter. My father only annotated the basic melodies/escobillas of the main cantes/dances from the guitarists point of view, focussing on basic melody, structure, compas relation, chord changes and key/que-notes so the students could study them in advance in order not to waste to much time during the live sessions with singers and dancers.
But annotating a song in full detail is a challenge he never had or dared to face. Obviously he listened to it a lot and he sometimes expressed his ideas about the (im)possibility to annotate cante. If i remember well it strongly depended on the quality and the style of singer. Some singers go straight from one tone to the other, others take the tourist route including lots of surrounding notes before they go to the key note. Some singers produce notes that are almost impossible to pitch. Others are true masters of using quarter tones. On top there are various ways of glissando's and other bindings that should be considered. I guess my father could have found some creative ways to deal with some of the problems involved but his general believe is that it is basically impossible to capture cante in full detail. The few times he tried it drove him crazy :-). It would be interesting to consult/study transcriptions of arabic music who have similar kinds of problems and probably have adapted sensible ways to deal with them.
But i'm sure you would love his toque transcriptions, especially those of the free forms which happened to be our specialty. As a rule my father always favor to show the relation to the main beat so you can always tell were you are. So a syncope is annotated in paired 1/8 notes with over bindings like this:
/12and /1 and /2 and/3
/.S..S~/S...S~/S...S.../S
As you know many others restrict to using solitaire 1/4 (long) and 1/8 (small) notes which give you no clue at all about the inner beat position.
.12..and.1..and..2.and.3
..S...L.........L.........S....S
And you'll totally love the small note interludes adding occasional secondary layers of events in relation to the main events (without contributing to/interfering with the main rhythm itself).... i can't show them with these characters but textual () interludes comes close.
Funny enough i can write notes myself but i can hardly read them :-) The scores of my father i have to spell out note by note, phrase by phrase and that's also how i memorize them...every time i add just as many notes as i can remember. In my student's years ('85-'93) i was able to memorize a 14 page score in about 3 hours...but than the work only had to begin and it would take me days or weeks to master the pice itself.
As far as Moraito's seguiriyas on the enquentro dvd is concerned: as far as i can judge it basically seems to be correct and in compas. My main objection was that at the end of a falseta he accelerate extremely making it very difficult to fallow the compas for untrained ears.............
But speaking about untrained ears, i might have become a little rusty myself. In my initial perception he accelerated in a split second from 20 to 120 miles/hour without adapting a gliding scale or a proper warning, which gave me the feeling of entering a roller coaster. When estebana responded that speed eruptions are common practice in flamenco and my critic basically excluded me from a sensible conversation my initial thought was "speed eruptions yes, but not this roller coaster approach.....
However, after watching it again (just did) i must admit that his acceleration is far less slpit second than i initially thought it was, and that he is using a gliding scale after all. I'm not sure i was a little rusty the first time i checked or to tired or suffering a bad day (i did indeed become ill shortly after) but that gliding scale to me makes all the difference and if this was a boxing game estebanana definitely would have won the game!
Moraito's rasgueado introduction (which is very very nice) is based on the fabulous chord Paco de Lucia once used as an introduction to his bulerias.....i know Moraito adored that chord as much as i do. The cante part is a nice illustration to some of the variations i mentioned in above link of edguerin and the falseta's are fine if you can fallow the accelerations and inner compas.
I thanks both Ricardo and edguerin for their support and i thank estebanana for barking and showing his teeth at the right moment :-)
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Date Oct. 11 2012 20:41:32
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